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Journalism about pwnage

X: Rebirth Is Gonna Release! Now Here’s What I Hope For

First, before you read any further, you should have checked out the new trailer and videos on the official X Universe Channel. Yes, it has a release date set for this year and this planet, but America is getting it after everybody else. 😦 xD I’m kidding it’s just a few days. Oh wait, that’s like five more Guild Wars levels. Oh man we’re getting screwed dangit Germany! It’s in November sometime. Look it up. If I touch Google I’ll naturally type in “icanhascheezburger”, and this article will never go beyond the draft stage.

It looks bad-flipping-arse. I know, many people are like “im dispoited that the swiss miss logo isnt teh hud. i will play star citzen insead for my scifi game tis sentry” but I still think it looks amazing. You can only fly one ship as a person, but that ship has a semi-hot EgoSoft-style animated chick in it! And you can fly drones, because you’re really a Tau now!

Yes, the ship thing did bother me at first, and it now considerably bothers me less so as long as I get to put a crap ton of guns on mah shipz, and I get to walk around my capital ships watching my dudes pew pew generally where I told them to, while having at least more exciting animations than FRUDDLING SILENT HUNTER 5 GUGRRGLE RAGEQUIT.

Really though, everyone on the forums was like “oh, first person walking around is probably asking waaaaay too much”, and I was like, “:( it’s probably true, but I can dream”, and then the trailer is like “stations, stations, STATIONS, WALK AROUND THESE STATIONS AND LIKE IT FUTHERMUCKERS” And while being unimpressed by XBAHX controller support, Bernd (something like that) is like “broskie, we have walking and stuff” and I was like :O and Neil Armstrong (R.I.P.) was probably like “took you long enough”.

Now, stick X: Rebirth and StarForge together and we’ll be onto something!

WHAT DOG WANTS

Anyways, I think the game, its graphics and its gameplay features look pretty dang baws. I still have hopes for it, probably many of them pretty big ones. Here they are, in probably not much order at all, because I don’t know what order is. I’m chaotic-good 😛 (was that supposed to be a joke? Idk, bromieskillet, idk)

1. Really really REALLY dynamic, open and substantial economies: I don’t want a whole lot of stuff spawning out of midair. I think it’d be fine if you had certain groups or something which spawned stuff out of midair, but the majority of groups/factions/whatever should have to have real, or at least fairly accurately simulated, economics and productions. You should be able to ruin or save an economy, or destroy other corporations. In the trailer they stated that asteroid fields would be depleted, and you’d have to seek out new resources. This sounds highly interesting, and I wonder how they’ll manage it, maybe random/procedurally generated asteroid fields that can spawn in certain areas after one has been depleted? How smart will the AI be in exploiting this?

Basically, I’ve always wanted a game where the player and AI are equal, and have generally the same restrictions as each other. That would be the ultimate thing that could give me immersion in an X game at this point, and they’ve got it pretty good. Like, Skyrim disappointed me with the AI a bit, as the NPCs didn’t do a whole lot like in Oblivion. Oblivion had really dynamic things that could happen, such as following a necromancer around as they went out of town raided a dungeon.

2. Variation and diversity: Now I don’t just mean in what you can do, which I’m going to assume X: Rebirth already has. I’m talking about how you can do those things, how varied the places are that you can do them at, and how fresh things will be after you’ve played a long time.

Now, something I like about X, and Minecraft, and specifically Hexxit and Tekkit, is that in all these games, the idea is that there is so much to learn, that it’d take you a very long time to actually be able to bring up an understanding of how anything works at any given time. Minecraft actually has handled complexity very gracefully when you think about it, as it has extremely simple interfaces for everything. X hasn’t always been the same way, but X isn’t totally the same kind of game, and has probably a lot more complex stuff and numbers going on behind the scenes than Minecraft, aside from possibly the world generation.

And then there’s Dwarf Fortress.

What I’m getting at, is I don’t want to know everything about a game. I want to be able to always be learning more about the mechanics and such. Many people absolutely hate not being able to understand everything on a game, and I try not to be too much of a Bilbo Laggins to them, as that’s their opinion; even though opinions seem to be devaluing at a rapid pace lately, and most people on the internet don’t seem to know what they actually are. And in this case, they don’t want to.

I want lots of complexity and deepnisity (put that in your dictionary and smoke it, because I’m making up words now), but I want it to be presented in an easily understandable and intuitive way. But beyond that, I also want everything from station interiors, to ship designs, to dialogue, to be varied, that so in my journey of figuring out how stuff works, it doesn’t become monotone and uninteresting. Maybe “I hope” is a better word, maybe not. I do hope EgoSoft can pull that off, and if not in this game, I’m sure X is going to be around for a while to come. It will happen at some point.

3. Complex strategicaloptions: What I mean by this, is I want to be able to do all kinds of badarse stuff such as cut off logistics to mess someone’s day up, blockade a trade lane to mess someone’s day up, build huge complex trading networks, to mess other companies days up, beat corporations to resources to mess their day up, hide in a fleet in an asteroid field to keep my day from being messed up/mess someone’s day up, manipulate huge production chains to slow down, destroy or make thriving an economy. I want to be able to position a huge tank of a ship sideways to block lots of fire, while my offensive ships use that cover to get really close, and mess someone’s day up.

This also means I want, as stated, very dynamic and substantial economies and factions/corporations, which I can manipulate to halt, destroy, or help. I don’t want invincible set factions, at least not a lot of them, and I don’t want infinitely magically spawning stuff, I want to be able to cut-off an economy completely. I want to help make an economy a thriving one, and defend it from other corporations who wish to make a claim. I want to go to war with the universe, and pew pew like pew pew has never pew-pew happened pew-pew before pew. Alliances need to fall under the might of a thousand suicidal drones modeled after Discoverers. I want to help parts of the galaxy, and burn others.

Sure, they have to have some set stuff for lore and the plot, but I don’t think it’s unrealistic — especially since they set it up in a kind of new, reborn and pioneering universe — that we be able to affect most things that we see fit outside of certain concrete setups. X plots can be good and all, but the main draw of an X game, is that it’s not only a space combat or trading simulations, it’s a universe sim. It’s a send-thirty-battleships-through-a-warpgate-and-fight-an-epic-battle-with-Xenon-while-trading-valued-and-rare-commodities-sim. It’s a simulation of a universe, where you can actually make a change and affect it’s growth or destruction.

X hasn’t always allowed for full freedom of affecting everything, but as gaming and computer technology gets better, I think we are so much closer to having that, and EgoSoft are most likely the ones who will take us the rest of the way to full universes full of exploitations and strategies, as they’re the only space-sim devs who have been consistently making better and better space-sims, not to mention the only ones to consistently be making space-sims.

4. Good character designs and stories: this is fairly straightforward, I want the characters to be really epic and have epic backgrounds, especially Semi-Hot EgoSoft-Style-Animated Chick. That’s her official new nickname. Start using it X community 😉

5. And finally, good pewpew: gamers don’t need to be told what that is.

Now really, I’m getting serious, leave some comments. I don’t care if it’s on here or on the Redditz, so hit backspace and type something in on reddit. Thank you. Upvotes are appreciated, but if you’re feeling really generous today, Hondo, maybe you’ll leave a downvote, because you’re rebellious. xD Thanks for reading. I haven’t told you to subscribe in a while, but now I’m telling you to, not even asking. Do it. Button. Right side. and/or the follow button at the top if you has a WordPress.